The exiles and policy makers – among whom, [Nagmeh] Sohrabi [of Brandeis University] points out, are many who don't want a military solution to Iran's nuclear stand-off with the West – base their characterisation of the movement as "what they want it to be and don't take into account the reality on the ground." ...

Sohrabi proposed that Washington's discourse tended to be limiting instead of taking a broader approach: "There are multiple ideas of what the Green Movement is. We need to be more careful about what it is and what it isn't. That doesn't mean that it can't be all these things at the same time."

Hawkish pundits have also been among the chief cliques in Washington assigning their own motivations and aspirations to the Green Movement writ large.

For example, senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute Josh Block, promoting a new Iran task force he co-chairs, has displayed this tendency. Block, for most of the previous decade, served as the ubiquitous spokesperson for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an organising hub of the U.S. pro-Israel lobby that has consistently pushed for harsher economic measures against Iran.

Contrary to some neoconservative hawks like Reuel Marc Gerecht of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Block acknowledged, in an interview with the Washington Post, that a threat of or an actual military attack on Iran could be damaging to the country's opposition.

But Block also told neoconservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, who supports attacking Iran and downplays the repercussions for the opposition, that he is certain what the opposition movement seeks: "It seems obvious the Iranian people want regime change. They voted that way in 2009." (Block did not respond to a query for clarification.)